How to advertise on Facebook: a step by step guide
Using Facebook to engage with your audience can be very effective. However sometimes a post or page may need a little added push to reach new customers. Advertising on Facebook can be a simple cost effective way of doing this.
Follow this step by step guide to get started with advertising on Facebook, and you should have your ad up on Facebook shortly.
Step 1: Marketing objective
Once logged in, you will be asked by Facebook, what it is you are trying to achieve with advertising. Choices are conveniently split between awareness, consideration, and conversion.
Choose whichever is relevant to you. For the sake of this guide we will choose 'Send people to your website'. Once chosen, pick a name for your campaign and continue.
Step 2: Audience targeting
Next, you will be given the options to narrow down your audience to target your ads more effectively. You can choose a custom name for this targeting if you wish to re-use your audience selection in another campaign. Choose the location, age group, gender, and language of the users you wish to target. If this is your first ad, you may leave all of these options untouched, run your ad, and see what type of users respond best to it.
Step 3: Placements
Once you have the audience targeted, you can choose where your ad is displayed. Depending on the type of campaign you have chosen, Facebook may recommend that it automatically chooses where to place the ads. If you know where your ad may perform better choose 'Edit Placements', and pick the areas you would like your ad to appear.
Placement options include:
- Desktop News Feed
- Mobile News Feed
- Right Column on Desktop
Step 4: Budget & Schedule
Now you should be at the Budget & Schedule options. Here you can choose how much you would like to spend on your ad per day, or you can specify a total budget if you choose a start and end date for your ad. Depending on your ad objective, you can choose when you get charged by Facebook. In this guide, the ad we are running is for clicks to a website, therefore Facebook will suggest getting charged by 'Link Clicks' is the best option. You can also set a bid amount for each click or allow Facebook to automatically bid for you to guarantee a better price for you. Depending on your objective you may also choose the time of day your ad will display, e.g if your ad is for a lunchtime deal for a restaurant, advertising just before lunch would be better than possibly advertising all day.
Step 5: Review reach
After you have chosen your audience, placement, budget and schedule, Facebook will give you an estimate of how many people your ad could potentially reach with your chosen options. Review this to make sure you're happy with your selection.
Step 6: Ad Format
Multiple options are now available when creating an ad on Facebook. A basic single image ad will be available by default, but if you have more images you can choose to have a carousel, or a slideshow. If you have a video, you may use this as your ad as well. Use the form to choose your ad type, and proceed to upload any images or video you need for the ad. If you are using images, make sure they are high quality.
Step 7: Connecting a page
Any ad you run on Facebook will be displayed under the name of your Facebook page. Your pages should be available in a dropdown selection box, choose the page to which the ad is related. As Instagram is also a part of Facebook now, your ad will be displayed there a swell, the Instagram account associated with your Facebook page will used to promote your ads there. If you do not have an Instagram account connected to your Facebook page, you can add an account, or optionally you can remove your ad from appearing on Instagram. Also if your campaign objective is website clicks, you will be asked for the url of your website, or a specific pge you wish to point users to. Along with this, enter a headline for your ad for e.g 'Visit my awesome site for great deals'.
Step 8: Confirmation
Finally, Facebook will present you with how your ad will look along with all the options you have chosen. If you are happy with all of this click 'Place order' and you're ad will be sent for review. As long as your ad does not breach any Facebook guidelines, it should be visible to users within a couple of hours.
Have a look at some Brands that are effectively promoting themselves using Facebook :
Looking for more step by step guides, have a look at our Marketing guides page.